>> Hello everyone.
My name is Brian Starley, and I want to tell you
a story about one of the most
incredible encounters with God that I've had in my entire life that has to do with the salvation
of a young woman that was saved out
of an occult witch coven in the woods
in Sparta, Georgia. This was, as I said,
one of the most incredible things that I've personally
ever seen the Lord do, one of the most sovereign things
I've ever seen the Lord do. And I want to give you
a bit of context, because just before we dive
immediately into the story, it's important that you know
the state of my heart in this encounter
and the state of my emotions, my mental state
leading into this. There's two primary things
I want to lead with. The first is that
I had absolutely no sense of something supernatural
that was about to occur when the Lord
opened up this door. It was just a simple
invitation from God to say, hey, I want you
to listen to worship. Come with me.
Go on a walk and pray. I used to primarily spend time
with the Lord going on long walks and just listening to worship and praying for hours
and hours on end. And so that was just for me,
time with God. But it was time with God
that was not necessarily intense most of the time.
It usually was peaceful. It usually was not leading
into something evangelistic or anything of that nature. And I say that because there's
something that takes place when God comes
and interrupts our routine. And for me, this was this prayer
time had become routine, and I think God was doing
something in shifting me into a new sense of anticipation
and an expectation to say, you can believe that I can come
in the midst of the most normal
everyday moments for you and do something beyond what you
could ever ask, think or imagine. And this was a moment
like that for me. The second thing I want to be
leading into this story with is the fact
that this was probably the most terrifying moment
of my life, right up there with, there was one time I almost fell off of a cliff
on a bus in Indonesia. That's a whole other story.
But next to that, this is the most
terrifying moment of my life. And I say that because one of
the greatest traps of the enemy for us as the body of Christ,
as believers in Jesus, is to come and invade
your thought space, invade your heart and cause you
to move into hope deferred and say, God,
there's something in me that is just too unqualified
to do this. And often
it's that attack of fear. And what I want
to encourage you with in the sharing of this testimony
is remember the fact that I was fearful the entire
time that never lifted, but God was faithful
in the midst of it. I also didn't necessarily feel
a very dynamic and active faith in the moment of this encounter for what transpired
to take place. But God, in the midst of a state
of me feeling weakness, as Paul explains, that's the perfect avenue
for his strength to flow through. So with that being said,
I want to dive into this story. This took place several years ago
when I was visiting my family in my hometown
of Sparta, Georgia. It was just
a normal family visit. And of course we were
talking about the Lord and things of that nature. But mostly we were just
spending time with each other and doing a little bit of reading
together and watching TV. And
I think it was the fourth
or fifth day of this visit, and all of a sudden I had this
prompting of the Holy Spirit. It was very gentle,
but I knew it was the Lord. And he said, I want you
to grab your headphones, put them on, go with me
on a walk and pray. I said, okay, Lord.
I said goodbye to my family. And I said, I'll probably
be back in two hours. It was normal for me
to pray for 1.5 hours, two hours on these walks. While all of a sudden I walked
and I said, you know what? I'm going to try
walking into the woods. Now I'm the complete opposite
of my younger brother. I'm not a very outdoorsy person.
I love looking at nature, but I'm not
a very nature, outdoorsy person. My younger brother
is the exact opposite. As I said, he loves hunting
and everything he owns is camo or neon orange or yellow. And I bring I'm bringing him up
because he gave me some advice that was very helpful
and plays into the story that I'm going to get into in
just a moment. That piece of advice
that he gave me. So I decided I'm going to go walk
with the Lord in the woods and I'm walking and I'm praying.
And as many of you will know, it's very, very easy
to lose track of time completely when you're just in that space
of, Lord, I love you
and you're just in worship and you feel sort of caught up
with him, if you will, especially when you begin praying
in the spirit and your prayer language, your mind just sort of
is is freed up and your spirit
is being filled up. And it's easy to lose
track of time. So it's very good to be lost
in God and lost in spirit. It's not so good when
you're literally physically lost. Well, that's what happened to me. And so I'm listening
to the worship music. It's getting late and I'm just
sort of procrastinating, putting off the time,
putting off the time, thinking it's okay, you know,
I'm sure I'll find my way back. And I ended up
sitting on this little log and praying
for another 30 minutes. And before I knew it,
my phone died. So I had no flashlight. I couldn't have my phone
for a light. And I realized, oh my gosh, I don't even know how many hours
I've been praying now. And I'm lost here in the middle
of the woods in Sparta. And I started to panic, not because
of any spiritual fear, but because we have
tons of coyotes. We have tons of wild pigs,
we have snakes, We have all sorts of, you know, critters that
I didn't want to be bumping into. And so I'm sitting in my hearts
kind of beginning to race. I'm panicking. And I remembered the advice that
my younger brother Jacob gave me. And he said, Brian, if you ever
for any reason in the woods and you find yourself lost,
the best thing that you can do if you don't have some equipment
or a, you know, a tent,
something to keep you warm and and nourished and all of
that stuff, you want to get out. And the way you want to get out
is find some source of light. And when you find
that source of light, it's probably going to be
just some campers. Or in our case,
we had a few neighbors and I thought, well,
I'll find one of them. And they'll throw me on the four
wheeler or something and we'll ride back home. And so I wandered around
and around for what felt like forever,
but probably was not that long. And eventually I saw
a light way off in the distance, and it was so far off
I couldn't exactly make out whether this was,
what type of light this was, whether it was a campfire,
etcetera. So I start walking and walking
and walking and walking. And eventually I made my way
close enough to the light to begin to see the outline
of some figures. I got a little bit closer,
maybe about 30 or 40 feet away. And when I got there,
I stopped dead in my tracks and literally lost my breath
for about two seconds because I got close enough
to realize that I couldn't
see them initially because they were
dressed entirely in all black and they were very much
blending into the dark, you know, South Georgia woods. And it was this group
of ten girls that were encircling
this campfire dressed fully in robes,
hoods up, and they were chanting. And they actually had made
an animal sacrifice. They had killed a cat, thrown it
in the middle of the fire. And they still had the knife
with the blood on it. Now, even in saying that,
it's funny, when you tell these stories,
your mind begins to go back and some of the emotions
begin to come back up when you're sharing
the testimonies. And I can begin to I feel
as I'm even sharing that with you all a little bit
of that apprehension of, oh my gosh,
what's going to happen? And I felt that in the moment. And at first it was sort of like
pinching myself, is this even real? And secondly, I'm looking at this
animal sacrifice, I'm taking in, oh, my gosh,
this is actually happening. I felt like I was
on the set of a movie. And as I'm taking this in, the only thing
I could think was not, you know, I really want to go
and evangelize these ten girls in the cult.
No, no, no, no, no. I felt nothing but fear and panic
and anxiety and thought, I've got to get out of here.
I've got to get out of here. And so I started slowly
trying to back up, and I ended up making noise. I don't have
any really recollection or I don't even, I probably
didn't even stop to look and see whether it was
a stick or I crunched something. And so all of them heard me. They all turned
and looked directly at me. And one of the girls, the girl
who had made the sacrifice, who was holding the knife,
points it at me. And she says,
what are you doing here? And I kid you not. I was frozen,
literally frozen in fear. I could not move
and could not speak. And it's funny, this was,
looking back, it's hilarious. But at the time, it was not. And I remember
before this encounter, I didn't think being frozen
with fear was a real thing. I would watch a movie,
let's say a superhero movie, an action movie, a piece of a building
or skyscrapers falling. And they'll often do camera pans
back and forth and you see someone
looking up at it over and over for sometimes 20 or 30s,
and you're thinking, What are you doing?
Run, get out of there. I thought it was just
a Hollywood movie trope, and I realized,
no, this is a real thing because I was sending
with my full mental strength every brain signal
to my legs screaming in my mind, run, run, activate,
get out of there. And no matter how much I tried
to send those signals to my legs, I couldn't move. And she screams this at me
two more times. What are you doing here?
What are you doing here? And after the third scream,
pointing this knife at me, all ten of them gazing
right at me, the Lord gave a word of knowledge
in that moment. And one of the ways words
of knowledge can come is through spontaneous speech. And this can be
pretty intimidating as well because it bypasses
your intellect completely. So I just blurted out
with no plan to say this I'm here because God sent me here
to tell you he's real and that he loves you. And I maybe had about one second
or two seconds as I was releasing that word
where I felt this boldness. That was the boldness of God.
It wasn't my human boldness. I felt no boldness
in the natural. And as soon as that word came out,
instantly that boldness left, and I was just there feeling all
of those intense emotions again. Now, honestly, I would have
preferred to release that word and say, god bless you
and turn and run away. I was that terrified.
But I said that word and I was back to being
frozen completely in fear. About half a second
after that word finished coming out of my mouth, she drops the knife
on the ground, pulls back her hood
and starts crying, weeping. All nine of the other girls turn. Look around at each other,
look confused, and they all just take off
and scatter. Now, I wish I could have been
able to reach the other nine, but my story
with them ends there. And so I'm just left now
looking at this girl, sobbing, sobbing so much that she's screaming
and shaking and wailing. And I slowly began
to think, okay. Obviously God's doing
something here. And so I tried to work up
what little courage I could. I don't know that
I worked up very much, but I slowly worked my way up
and up and up. And when I got about 2 or 3 feet
in front of her, she jumps out and I thought
I was going to be attacked because she just lunged at me. But when she lunged,
she just grabs me, embraces me and falls
down on her knees, pulls me down with her,
and she just weeps. It covers my shirt, weeping. And I was trying to ask her
what's going on? What is, obviously this was,
I knew it was God speaking, but I didn't know
what this meant. I didn't really understand
what was happening. And she was crying so hard that
her breathing was exacerbated. She was, so she couldn't really
speak to me for quite a while without just these big breaths. And when she finally
could speak to me, my mind was absolutely blown and is still blown to this day
by what God did in this moment that I thought was just
circumstantial or an accident. But it wasn't.
It was providential. It was a God setup. And I want to encourage you
with that as well. And your normal just routine
or mundane things of life. Expect providential moments.
Look for God setups. When you hear those promptings,
listen to the promptings. I think also back in the story
and wonder what if I had not listened
to the Lord to go on this walk just because it was late
and I was tired. So anyway, when she finally
could speak again and tell me what was going on,
my mind was absolutely blown because I found out that not only
was she in this satanic cult, full blown witchcraft, but her mother
had raised her as a believer. And not just that,
but her mother raised her as a charismatic believer,
Pentecostal believer, and she would pray
over her and pray in the spirit. And when she began to get into
preteens around 11 and 12, her and her group of friends
started getting into things like Reiki and therapeutic touch
and playing with Ouija boards. And I really want to encourage
you guys as well. If you have family members
or you yourself, anyone you know are starting
to dabble in things like this, new age crystals,
etcetera, tarot cards, this is one of the greatest traps
of the enemy to bring us fuller
and fuller, closer and closer, into the slippery slope
of the demonic. So as she started
getting into these things, it escalated and escalated until she was now
in full blown witchcraft with this group of her nine
other friends, and seances, sacrifices, cutting themselves,
the whole thing. And I find out that earlier
that morning, she, and at this point she's been since 13 years old bound
in all of this stuff, and she was 19
when this happened. She was upstairs. She came down from her room,
walked down the stairs, and she told me how she would
constantly be butting heads and getting into arguments
with her mother. So this morning was no different. That same morning, she came down
the stairs and when she did, her mother said, sweetie,
I'm praying for you. Her name is Katrina.
Katrina, I'm praying for you that you would know
the love of Jesus, that you'd know the love of God, that he's real
and that he loves you. And she snapped back at her mom
and said, mom, I wish you would just shut up
with all of that stuff. The only way,
and this still blows my mind, she says this this morning,
hours earlier to her mom, the only way I'm going to believe
a word of this stuff that you're telling me is if someone
were to come up to me tonight, sent from God
to say that he's real and that he loves me, and that pierced my heart
when I heard that. And I just started weeping
with her there in the ground. And eventually when we were
recollected enough, I broke the power
of witchcraft off of her. And it was very peaceful. It wasn't it wasn't
a very dramatic deliverance like one may expect.
It was just the peace of God, which I think was because the Lord knew
that's what she needed. Just breathed on her. And after
we walked through that stuff and renounced those things,
I led her to Jesus, and she helped me
get home, actually. And she ended up
being the first person that I ever really
intentionally discipled. And there are so many things
that we could pull from and teach from in that story.
But again, I want to go back to telling you the fact
that you can trust God
when you don't feel up to task. I didn't feel up to task
whatsoever in the moment. I didn't feel emboldened
in the moment. I didn't feel like I was
a good evangelist in the moment. But listen, regardless
of how you feel, the Holy Spirit is in you, and
He is the best Evangelist. And so with that being said,
I want to pray for everybody that's watching
that the Lord would just use this to build your faith
and to build your expectation. Your anticipation. To rest in his grace,
rest in his sovereignty and rest in his goodness. And should you encounter
these things and scenarios, people in whatever capacity
that may be and you feel
this intimidation come, you feel this terror come on you. Remember the story
and trust in the Lord. Stand back and declare what He says
and watch what God will do. So in the name of Jesus,
Holy Spirit, I pray for every single man
and woman who is going to watch
this video and hear this story. Lord, I pray that in sharing it,
you would let it be a bridge and not a barrier, or that
it wouldn't be a barrier to say, oh, if only I were where
someone like this or someone who was bold,
someone who was extroverted and fearless
that I could do this. The enemy wants testimony
to be a barrier. Don't let it be a barrier.
Let it be a bridge to say I can step out and walk on that. The testimony is a declaration
to say, do it again, God. So, Lord, I pray for them that you would let this
be a doing again, a breathing afresh upon
your people, filling them, Lord,
with expectancy, with renewed faith
and renewed fervor and passion for the supernatural,
for signs and wonders, and for your kingdom
to break into our midst, into their midst
on a daily basis. In Jesus name. Amen.
God bless you.
